


Pick a card, any card

by Strigimorphaes



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Awkward Tension, Drinking, Drunk Nott, Fluff, Fortune Telling, Love Confessions, M/M, Nott is helping, Self-Esteem Issues, Tarot, The whole team is supportive, oblivious Caleb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-23 21:26:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strigimorphaes/pseuds/Strigimorphaes
Summary: Mollymauk gives Caleb a free tarot reading - with cards up his sleeves and a certain message in mind - but things do not go according to plan when the rest of the party decides to meddle.





	Pick a card, any card

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I'm back on my late night love confessions bullshit again even though it's been done before I love it and I am not sorry.
> 
> *edit: this was written before That Thing Happened, btw.*

With their pockets full of freshly-looted gold, Mollymauk and Nott have gotten, respectively, somewhat drunk and completely smashed out of her small goblin mind. The tavern room is empty this late at night – there are not many guests so far from the civilized world – but Caleb is there, trying to ignore his companions.

He can deal with the sound of the storm outside as far as background noise goes, but all that talking on the other side of the table is the limit. He can't read while they relive their last fight with loud exaggerations and sweeping gestures: The words on the page and the words in the air mix until everything is incomprehensible.

"Could you shut up for just a minute?" Caleb asks, looking up from his book.

As one, Nott and Molly turn towards him. On the table lie empty tankards and plates and, for some reason, Molly's tarot cards, stacked into two messy piles. 

"Can't you go to your room if you need peace and quiet?" asks Nott.

"Beau and Jester are doing something in there that involved shoving me out the door."

"Like what?”

With a sigh, Caleb lets his eyes turn cloudy and sends his mind one story up, a bit to the left, and into his cat. Frumpkin rests on top of the wardrobe, gazing down, and he reports: "Jester is using my ink for her drawings."

“Your magic inks?!”

"…Indecent drawings." With a shudder, Caleb sees out of his own eyes once more – and he sees, for some reason, Molly staring at him.

The tiefling nonchalantly takes a last, stale biscuit from a tray and says, “Wouldn't want to disturb that.”

"I'll just take a watch extra tomorrow," Nott says, taking a swig from her flask. "Gonna give you time to read in the back of the wagon."

Caleb pats her on the head. "You will be having a hangover."

"I will _not_."

"You will and we both know this." Resigned, Caleb closes his book. "I will be fine, Nott. I can read in the middle of the night if I must, or early in the morning. We have gotten by with less sleep before this, ja?"

"I'll drink to that." No sooner has Nott raised her small fist before she seems to be losing her balance, and Caleb barely catches her by her collar, lowering her to the floor. She sways for second. Then, without a word, she turns on her heel and staggers towards the stairs, mumbling something about calling it a night.

Molly watches everything play out with his chin resting on one hand, elbow planted by the tarot cards. Long eyelashes draw strange shadows over his cheeks as the candles flicker. It might be magic that makes the flames die one by one until theirs is the only table with any light around it, but there is nobody but Caleb around to wonder. It is a lonely place, this tavern, lying on the edge of the swamp and in the depths of lawlessness.

Molly traces the edge of a card with a painted fingernail. "So, Caleb. Will you be facing down our resident artist upstairs or shall we find some way to pass the time?"

Caleb sits enthralled by the way Molly's tail lashes the air. He wonders what it means.Excitement? A terrible impulse?

...It can't be good.

"You're worrying me," he then mutters. "I am surprised you have not managed to cause something of an indecent nature down here also."

"We all have our off days," Molly says, shuffling his deck. The cards bend and jump like they have lives of their own. Numerous half-moon-shaped marks line the gilded edges.

Caleb stares. Partly at the cards, glittering with images that flash so tantalizingly quickly by. Partly at Molly’s hands, blood-covered just this morning – now they are clean and perfumed, a flowery scent lurking under the tavern’s sour smell of beer and sweat. There are all sorts of little civilized touches that do not fully distract from the clear inhumanity of his purple skin and the red, glowing eyes further up.

"How long have you had those cards?" Caleb asks, folding his own hands. They're just hands. Completely human even after everything they’ve done. And there's a black shadow resting on them - Molly's shadow. Without looking up, Caleb can tell from his voice that he is grinning.

Sharp teeth flash as Molly says, "Oh, had ‘em a year and a half. Bought 'em off an old circus seer. They're reliable."

"For tricks, you mean?"

"That, too." For a moment, his eyes seem to glow more intensely, but it must be a play of the light. "They can tell the future.”

“You are good at making people believe that, at least.”

“I can tell _your_ future, if you like.” Molly’s tone is casual, but even Caleb can tell that it is partly an act.

"Really?"

"Really."

Silence settles over the room. Awkward silence. Caleb had not yet noticed how alone they are: Even the inn-keeper has retired for the night, leaving the empty tankards on the floor to roll around in the drafts. Rats scurry to the bar. He considers excusing himself, saying something about Frumpkin being in trouble, but on the other hand… It's just a bit of card trickery. With a drunken Molly, it could be so much worse.

Giving a small nod, Caleb vaguely remembers a saying about giving the devil your little finger -

"We don't have to do anything big," Molly says. He moves quickly as he spreads the tarot cards across the table. The rows aren't even due to the spilled liquor and apple cores, but it's close enough. "Three-card reading. Pick some cards.” He looks down at the cards, pausing before he adds, “A relationship."

"I can pick any cards at all?"

"Those that speak to you."

Caleb's hand hovers above the table while Molly leans back, watching with his arms crossed. Refusing to think long about it, Caleb picks the cards quickly, at random.

Knowing Molly, it really won’t matter at all.

Molly takes the three chosen into his hands - for a second, the long sleeves of his coat cover the cards being shuffled. It takes a while, but the sound is soothing. Finally, he lays the cards face-down exactly between them and points at the leftmost one. There’s a flourish to the gesture.

"Here's the querier," he declares. Again, his tail moves unnervingly from side to side. "You know. _You._ Go on, turn it over."

Caleb does so, clumsily, getting a bit of beer on the corner of the card. Molly doesn't seem to notice or care. There's a manic energy about him, and a slight pause before he speaks.

"That's the Magician."

A young man stands with a wand raised to the sky. Clothes of gold and silver. A glorious mane of hair around an unscarred face. Pretty symbols and fantasy. A wry smile finds its way to Caleb's lips - "If you say so."

He looks up at Molly through strands of dirty hair and finds the tiefling a shade paler than usual. A little _lavender_ as he turns over the next card.

" _The Devil_ ," Molly declares. A monster contorts itself between the card's flashy borders as if caged in the drawing.

"You, I suppose."  Caleb reaches for the card, studying it more closely. A pitch-black demon with curved horns, chains hanging from wide hands and a naked slave sitting below its throne. Wine spills from overflowing goblets.

"If you want it to be."

Caleb clears his throat. It's one of those times where he just doesn't know what to say to Molly, especially when the man is winking. Instead, he asks, "Does it matter whether they are lying upside-down or not? I think I recall something about - "

"I suppose it technically does."

"Upside-down for me or for you, though?"

Molly shrugs. "That's a good question."

"And here's another - what is the last card?"

“That'd be the relation between the two others. So -"

"Me and you."

Molly nods, staring intensely as if he can see straight through the card, see the image before Caleb reveals it. 

Caleb takes the last card and freezes up. He’s holding _the Lovers,_ and he does not know what to do about it. Two figures lie in a garden beneath flowers and lights, entwined in the kind of bliss that only exists in illustrations and lies peddled by fortune-tellers. He settles on raising an eyebrow. His fingers are shaking a little out of nervousness, but he hides it, letting his hands slip under the table. Molly must have planned this.

Only - Molly doesn't look like this is right. His chair scrapes against the floorboards as he stands, brows furrowed. "This wasn't supposed to happen," he says.

"No?" 

Of course it was a trick - was meant to be a trick anyway. Molly swears under his breath. "I could have sworn - no, this isn't right, I had prepared this - _you were supposed to draw something else_."

"I suppose you had the cards somewhere in your coat,” Caleb says. “Your sleeves or – “

“My pockets. I put the three cards I wanted you to draw into my pockets before - but that wasn't one of them.”

"Well," Caleb says. It can't be magic playing cards sabotaging Molly's trick. That is preposterous, and he speaks quickly as to not give either of them time to dwell on _that_ idea. "It would be easy for someone to slip a hand into your pocket. Or one could use magic. Did any of the others get the chance?”

"I got ready just before you and Nott came down here. Beau saw me, I think. But I did also tell her what I was planning on - I would have put the Sun as your third card, see how you reacted, maybe breach the topic of - anyway, I was sure something so blatant as the Lovers would just make you freeze up. "

"And you were right, but I will say being blatant is not usually a problem for you."

"I thought it'd be a little much," Molly sighs, running a hand along the ridges of his right horn. 

"But you thought about it."

A pause. Molly gathers his cards back into a single deck, dropping it into a pocket in his coat. "I've thought about lots of things." He waits, as if expecting Caleb to cut in. It is a chance not taken. “Now, if it _was_ Beau messing with me – did she think we’d kiss and confess just because the cards said so?

The awkward silence returns with a vengeance.

Caleb looks down.

That card, the Lovers _–_ it’s still lying there like it’s mocking him.

It doesn’t feel right.

Caleb Widogast isn’t someone other people fall in love with. What is there in him that is worthy of that? And love isn’t supposed to be spoken of so openly – it's supposed to be clandestine and for other people. Not something like brightly-coloured Molly in his eyesore-coat coming on to him in a dirty inn late at night. Romance doesn't suit either of them nor this place.

Caleb wants to slink away from it all. Molly couldn’t really have meant that he wanted Caleb, and Caleb can’t want anybody.

Something changes in Molly's face. An almost imperceptible hardening, a shift in his jaw. He glances away as if the silence itself is Caleb’s answer. It isn't - it's not a _no_ , at least. But it's not a _yes_ either, the word stuck in Caleb’s throat for now. All he manages to say is, "I'll go upstairs."

Molly steps away from the table. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"We share a room. You will be there eventually."

"Yes. But I could stay down here drinking a long while longer, if you don't want my company."

"...You can come," Caleb says, casting a final glance around the room before heading for the stairs. What a mess they leave behind. And what a mess they take with them, he thinks, as Molly follows. They've got a tangle of thoughts and unsaid things between them, a cat's cradle that just got some brand new knots.

His palms are sweaty when he grabs the door handle, and wiping them off on his pants only makes them both sweaty and dirty. He pushes open the door and finds that there is plenty of light waiting for him – lit candles and a lantern burning in the windowsill.

The room has low ceilings and too little space, four damp beds crammed between thin walls. A wardrobe looms in the corner with wear and tear on the wood like a brawler’s scars. This will be the second night Caleb spends listening to Fjord's sudden turns, Yasha's deep breaths and the words Molly murmurs when he's dreaming. Never words that make sense. Syllables that trail off, a language only he knows.

Maybe Caleb won’t hear it tonight. He’s too tired. It’ll be a deep sleep.

There's no trace of the girls apart from blankets pulled halfway off the mattresses and an empty inkwell in the windowsill. Scattered paper on the floor. Okay, there are several traces of them, but not anything big like he'd feared. It’s not like they disassembled everything to build a pillow fort. With Jester, you never know.

Caleb places his book on his bed. He is as silent as Molly, who stands by the window, looking out at the swamp. It should be alright to share this silence, but it's different from the usual, not like when they’re on the road or resting in the wagon - Caleb is tense all over. Stupid little cards. And he is too aware that Molly wants something Caleb barely knows what is.

He sinks down beside his book, hands in his lap.

A bit of gold peaks out beneath his pillow. Curious, Caleb reaches in and finds a card, just like the rest of them, and his brows furrow when he holds it into the light. The Lovers. Again. That’s going straight back under the pillow. No reason to mention it.

Better to focus on shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the bedpost. He also decides to check on his supplies to find out just how much ink he unwillingly donated to the arts, but between the paper and quills there is yet another card.

Lovers. And in his spare socks - the Lovers _._ Now it’s a deliberate search, and as he goes through all of his belongings, he finds it again and again. Between the pages of a book, and inside a folded map – Lovers, all over. The cards slip from his hands, and he leaves them on the bed as he lays down, exhausted.

There's a tarot card wedged into the ceiling directly above him, embedded in the moldy wood like a strange throwing star.

Caleb finds himself back on his feet, for once without his coat as he approaches Molly's bed. He tears away the pillow, exposing the tarot card buried there.

"Hey," Molly begins, turning halfway to look at Caleb. "What's - "

"Check your bag. And everywhere else, for that matter."

Molly does so, whistling as he removes a card from a bundle of peacock-feather-patterned clothing. "I'll be dammed," he says, turning towards Caleb - "Maybe the cards really _are_ trying to tell us something, huh?"

" _Someone_ is."

"Maybe it’s the Traveller. Believe me, I had _nothing_ to do with this whatsoever." Molly's voice does sound earnest – and lighter, now, the joy of the unexpected coursing through him. "Couldn't it be fate?"

It is... Well, Caleb touches his own face and discovers a smile. His tiredness is only superficial, performative, when he says, "This is ridiculous."

"Maybe it's fitting."

"Because we are ridiculous, you mean?"

"Something like that. We are literally surrounded by signs and still not..." Molly hesitates, hands opening and closing. Then he breathes in deep, and with a smooth motion reaches out to put one hand on Caleb's cheek, curling his fingers ever so slightly, fingertips brushing against stubble and skin.

There are so many things Caleb thinks about that, but he can’t make the thoughts into sentences that would satisfy either of them. He can’t express that he wants but is afraid of both wanting and getting what he desires and -

As Molly lets his hand fall, his coat drops from his shoulders, and the sudden movement causes the remainder of the tarot deck to spill from his pockets onto the floor in a great big pile of colour and symbols, hardly any harder for the eyes to parse than Molly himself. He does not react. Nothing seems to be more important to him than Caleb in the moment, and Caleb so detests being so intensely observed, that undivided attention unsettling him.  

“But I’m not –“ he stammers, “I wouldn’t be good for you. For anyone. I’m not someone you should – “

Molly silences him with something like a groan – or a growl, hard to tell, and either way white teeth are flashing. “Don’t even start. I’m not in the mood to hear you going on about how you don’t deserve this. Trust me now. I’m a gleaming diamond in the rough, and I know my kind. I would kiss you right now, Widogast, if you let me.”

Caleb just stares into those red eyes. Up close, there is something both hypnotically calming and subtly terrifying about the way they reflect the lights like pools of blood. Hardly a romantic thought. He averts his gaze – he has to, in order to answer:

"I would like that very much."

It’s all he can say. Not that he really _wants_ to kiss Molly, because he’s sure it’ll spell disaster. Just that he knows he would like it despite all the reasons he shouldn’t. At his feet lie so many cards, some of which he knows by name and others he simply recognizes as images, and Molly could have chosen to show any of them in the room below. He could have prepared a sullen Hermit or a Fool - or, at the other end of the spectrum, something entirely undeserved that he could never live up to. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the Lovers under other mattresses, stuck to the door, placed in a pair of boots – all around them.

And he hears a strange little sound, like a cheer broken halfway through by someone clamping their hand over their mouth. It comes from the wardrobe, and Molly heard it too. As one, they turn towards it.

From behind the wardrobe doors comes a very quiet "Fuck."

Molly's smile is very genuine, very wide, and a little bit more toothy than usual. He holds one finger to his lips and makes his way, slowly, to the wardrobe. After waiting a second, he slams it open to reveal Nott, who emits a shrill scream and barely avoids meeting the floor face-first as she falls out.

Led by pure instinct, Caleb rushes towards her, picking her up. He holds her at eye level and gives her a stern glare.

"Well," the goblin says, "at least the first part worked."

"The first part of what?" Molly asks, standing with his hands on his hips.

"The plan!" Nott squirms in Caleb’s grasp until he puts her back down in the foot end of his bed. She looks at Molly. "Jester's plan, mostly, because Beau told her that you'd be coming on to Caleb and we all thought it was about time but also that you would probably be too subtle because Caleb is Caleb and you need to give my boy a pretty broad hint if he's gonna catch it, so we decided to _help_ -"

"Was everyone hiding tarot cards in my underwear?" Caleb asks.

Nott counts on her fingers. "Not everyone. Fjord is off polishing his sword somewhere."

"At least he does it in private," Molly comments, snapping back to serious conversation soon after as he pulls a card out of an empty tankard. "How did you make all these?"

"Magic inks and forgery? A little bit of the Traveller's help, too, apparently. Jester did a lot of the making and magic-ing. Beau did a lot of the... hiding."

Caleb and Molly exchange a glance, both slightly more at ease.

Even Nott relaxes a little bit. "I, um. It just seemed like a thing that needed doing. What with the tension, as of late, and such, and honestly – _hic!_ – sorry about that - I think that…" She raises her head to look Molly in the eye. "I think you could make my boy very happy."

Molly softens, too. "Trust me, I - "

"Shh," Caleb interrupts. "I am willing to bet quite a lot that the rest of our group is standing outside with their ears to the door.”

“Absolutely they are,” Nott cuts in.

“I think Molly and I will need to discuss these things in private, ja? Nott, would you mind - "

"I'll give you privacy," Nott says, climbing down from the bed.

When she opens the door, they all hear the tell-tale sound of several people dashing down the hall. For an instant, her eyes shine eerie green through the crack before the door falls shut once more, leaving Caleb and Molly alone.

"Well," Caleb sighs. "Here we are." He slumps down onto the bed, feeling naked without his coat. 

A coatless Molly is worse, though, like a peacock without his feathers when he sits down just a few inches away. "Here we are."

"Of course it was a trick. I never believed in fortune telling."

"You shouldn't. It's all lies," Molly says, in a gentle sort of way so that it doesn't sound quite true. 

Caleb keeps his eyes fixed on the floorboards. "I believe _you_ , though.”

A sharp intake of breath makes it sound like Molly is about to say one shouldn’t believe in him either, but he catches himself, and for that, Caleb is grateful.

"...It is a bit overwhelming to think about." Caleb clears his throat. "You are overwhelming, sometimes, but it seems like you need to be. I apologize if there have been some previous signals I have not seen -"

Molly shakes his head overbearingly. " _Gods above_ , you've been dense."

"I know. You shouldn't have waited for the cards to speak to me,” Caleb says, voice soft and tired. “I’ve got the message now, though."

"And will you reply to this message?" Molly snickers.

On the bed sheets between them, Caleb reaches out and takes Molly's hand. He blames the purple tinge of the tielfing's skin for making him think it would be cold to the touch, but there's clearly hot blood just beneath his fingertips. A quickening pulse. He hooks his fingers into Molly’s, and Molly squeezes back hard enough that it hurts.

"Thank you," Caleb says, an exhalation of a breath he's held too long. He raises his gaze to the window where the dark night outside lets their reflections appear all the clearer. "I can't believe you’d love someone like me."

Side by side they sit, and Molly rests his head on Caleb's shoulder. "I can't believe you didn't notice before now."

In the window-glass Caleb’s face is white, and behind it lies a tangle of black branches and spiderwebs. Something inside him breaks at Molly's words, something that had kept him from leaning back against Molly and finally breathing right. He laughs when the tarot card on the ceiling comes loose and floats towards the floor. It lands in his and Molly’s shadows, which have become one shadow, and he is glad because he knows Molly will never be able to look at that card the same.

He never wants to let go of that hand in his. 

He doesn't know if he'll ever get used to that word.

_Lovers._

It will take time - but then again, it will also take time to get used to having Molly's tail wrapped around his leg. 

**Author's Note:**

> @strigimorphaes on tumblr, come by sometime


End file.
